Our DNA for Coffee!

This Blog believes coffee had bad rap! Eat Well articles make excellent points…World Health Organization that often drags it’s feet, has now reversed itself on classifying coffee as possibly carcinogenic. But major interest that past conflicting views may actually come down to our genes! Our DNA for Coffee! Professor El-Sohemy of the department of nutritional sciences at the University of Toronto, noticing varying reactions people to coffee, zeroed in on gene CYP1A2 that controls an enzyme that determines speed of our capacity to break down coffee! Variants of the gene inherited from our parent or cumulative effectively from both…may make us fast metabolizers. Fascinatingly Dr. El-Sohemy also connected to Nutrigenomix, found that increase in heart attack risk for fast metabolizers non-existent!…in fact exact opposite.. It is simply speed of metabolizing caffeine, thus allowing all the good antioxidants and polyphenols in coffee to work their healthful magic!

A company called FitnessGenes can analyse 41 different genes related to diet and exercise, including CYP1A2…result: that 40% fast metabolizers (both parents) 45% both slow and fast, and 15% carry two copies of slow allele! Our DNA for Coffee!

In a 2015 study, Dr. Cornelis and a team of international scientists identified eight genetic variants that appear to make people more likely to seek out coffee, including at least two that are involved in psychologically rewarding effects of caffeine. Our DNA for Coffee!

Other recent studies linked moderate coffee drinking — the equivalent of three or four 5-ounce cups of coffee a day to: reduction risk of developing Type 2 diabetes, basal cell carcinoma, prostate cancer, oral cancer and breast cancer recurrence. But really interesting: 2012 study of humans, researchers University of South Florida and University of Miami tested the blood levels of caffeine in older mild cognitive impaired adults, a common precursor of Alzheimer’s disease, and then re-evaluated them two to four years later. Participants with little or no caffeine circulating in their bloodstreams were far more likely to have progressed to full-blown Alzheimer’s, than those whose blood indicated they’d had about three cups’ worth of caffeine. Dr. Gregory G. Freund, professor of pathology University of Illinois, also indicated mice studies suggest coffee as an offset for Alzheimer’s! As he says a cup or three of coffee …probably good reasons.